Literary Review #4

1. Booth, R., et al. "The Age of Anxiety? It Depends Where You Look: Changes in STAI Trait Anxiety, 1970-2010." Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, vol. 51, no. 2, Feb. 2016, pp. 193-202. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s00127-015-1096-0.

2. This was a study done to see if anxiety has really been increasing worldwide or if it is only impacting certain populations. They used population-level surveys and the results showed a significant anxiety increase worldwide, but the pattern was less clear in many individual nations. The analyses also suggest that although anxiety may have increased worldwide, it might not be increasing as dramatically as previously thought, except in specific populations, such as North American students.

3. Booth, R.a

• Sharma, D.b
• Leader, T c
• Booth, R W d
• Leader, T I e

a Department of Psychology, MEF University, Ayazağa Cad. No 4, Maslak-Sarıyer 34396 İstanbul Turkey

b School of Psychology, University of Kent, Kent UK

c Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville USA

d Department of Psychology, MEF University, Ayazağa Cad. No 4, Maslak-Sarıyer, 34396, İstanbul, Turkey

e Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA, USA

4. Age of Anxiety: claim that people are more prone to anxiety now than they were previously due to societal changes such as increasing working hours or exposure to new media.

• Psychiatric Epidemiology: field which studies the causes of mental disorders in society, as well as conceptualization and prevalence of mental illness

5. "For example, if the increases in American anxiety are restricted to students, this does not mean that they are unimportant: indeed, these data suggest a dramatic and harmful increase in anxiety in this group. The next generation of American professionals is not just being saddled with greater debt, but they are also being saddled with greater emotional distress and vulnerability to health problems. This is likely to impact the country’s economic performance long into the future."  (pg. 201)

• "Anxiety increases in American and Canadian students are potentially serious—our results suggest approximately 64 % of American students in 2008 scored above the mean for 1968—but may not indicate population-wide anxiety increases. " (pg. 200)
• "Alternatively, students perhaps have had more reason to experience more anxiety than the general population. Economic conditions in the USA have been generally good for the period studied, but tuition fees and student debt increased dramatically. Exaggerated increases in anxiety among the student population are therefore expected. " (pg. 200)

6. The value of this material for my project is that I will be using it as evidence against the counter argument that it isn't the stress the students are experiencing in college that is causing an increase in reported cases, but it is in fact a worldwide. This study helps debunk that theory because the analyses of this study suggest that any increase in anxiety in the USA and Canada may be limited to students.